Echo360, the company that powers WPI’s lecture capturing technologies, published a press release late yesterday announcing their acquisition of ThinkBinder, an online collaboration tool intended for student project teams. ThinkBinder allows teams to have private, group-only discussion boards, file repositories, whiteboard space, and video chats – all hosted in the cloud – for managing project-related work. This news is hot…Continue Reading Echo360 Acquires ThinkBinder, an online collaboration tool for student project teams
Self and Peer Assessment: Feedback on Group Work
I’m not kidding when I say that three faculty members have approached us very recently with a similar teaching challenge: How can I use technology to help with team assessment? And here in the TTL group, we LOVE a challenge. Each professor has slightly different needs, however all centered around the desire for students in…Continue Reading Self and Peer Assessment: Feedback on Group Work
Pen Technology in Education
The use of pen-based technology at WPI breaks into three categories, as far as I can tell. I am open to argument about this, though! 1. Our amazing Interactive Media and Game Development courses. I wish I knew more about what you do, but everything I see is beautiful! 2. Writing in Class The process of…Continue Reading Pen Technology in Education
Why can’t I right-click to copy and paste in myWPI anymore?
The January 4th update to myWPI/Blackboard brought us some new features, including the new visual text-box editor (VTBE). We’re very excited about the new VTBE as it introduces many improvements, including the ability to resize the text-box editor space (drag the hashmarks in the lower right-hand corner to resize your typing space) and also the…Continue Reading Why can’t I right-click to copy and paste in myWPI anymore?
Are we ditching finals? (weep) Alternative Assessment Ideas
My own undergraduate experience, which was so long ago that we didn’t even know the word “blog”, was full of midterm and final exams. But of all of these tests, I remember only one: my Introduction to Biology final. I remember it because it was multiple choice questions from the exams we had taken over…Continue Reading Are we ditching finals? (weep) Alternative Assessment Ideas
Apple Computers and Projectors on Campus
Editors Note: This week we welcome guest Blogger Michael Grossfeld. Michael is an avid Mac OS X user and has been giving the ATC lots of great advice for troubleshooting Mac laptop connections in our eClassrooms. We invited Michael to post the instructions that he gave us to our blog and hope that they are just as helpful to WPI’s growing…Continue Reading Apple Computers and Projectors on Campus
A Media in the Classroom Case Study: MediaKron
At the beginning of this past Fall, Professor Jill Rulfs incorporated a pilot media management system designed by Boston College into her freshman seminar class. The course is designed as an interdisciplinary study of the 1854 outbreak of cholera in London. Students in this course study a bit of history, science, engineering, politics, and economy and the role that each of these elements played in that epidemic, as well as in similar recent epidemics (such as in Haiti, in 2010)….Continue Reading A Media in the Classroom Case Study: MediaKron
Teaching Naked: a Review
Disclaimer: If you found this blog post by Googling, you may or may not be in the right place since the title of this blog post, and the book being reviewed, may seem somewhat… “controversial”… However, I assure you that the only thing that you might find that is even remotely controversial, but certainly not…Continue Reading Teaching Naked: a Review
Mid-term Course Feedback
We have been hearing some chatter from both students and faculty on the benefits of collecting feedback students in the middle of the term. Students appreciate the opportunity to give faculty feedback on how the course is going, and faculty appreciate the opportunity to get this feedback while there is still time to adjust! The…Continue Reading Mid-term Course Feedback
Tips for Teaching Adult Students Online
Demographic studies of distance learning students indicate that they are older than students in traditional campus-based programs, they usually work outside the home, and many are married with families. Most students take courses on a part-time basis while holding down a job, with the intention of pursuing education to help them advance in their careers….Continue Reading Tips for Teaching Adult Students Online